Suzanne Vega, City Inspired

By

Martin Johnson

Updated May 6, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

When most people think of New York rock stars, they think of the savvy impudence of Lou Reed, the pristine glamour of Alicia Keys, the urbane grit of Nas, or the eclectic sear of bands like the New York Dolls, Sonic Youth and TV on the Radio. The quiet intellect of singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega doesn't always come to mind, but it should. Her songs bristle with keen observations honed by five decades of living in several Manhattan neighborhoods, and they are delivered with the confident intimacy of a side-street bistro that has become an institution despite its off-the-beaten-path location. This month, Ms. Vega is marking 25 years since the release of her debut album, "Suzanne Vega" (A&M), with three concerts at City Winery in SoHo, and at her first show on Saturday evening she performed the entire recording in its original order.

ENLARGE

Marking 25 years since her debut album.
Reuters

City Winery

151 Varick St. May 6 and 19

That disc launched more than just Ms. Vega's career. Singer-songwriters, a staple of the 1960s and '70s, had fallen from favor by the mid-'80s, but Ms. Vega's stellar work revived the genre and paved the way for a generation of female musicians. Ms. Vega moved to New York as a toddler, grew up on the Upper West Side and in Spanish Harlem, graduated from Barnard College, and sharpened her skills at Folk City, the Greenwich Village club where Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen once worked out the kinks in their work. Ms. Vega's song "Tom's Diner," from 1987's "Solitude Standing," made the Morningside Heights eatery a local landmark before "Seinfeld" lionized it.

Ms. Vega has been an enthusiastic sonic innovator. Her 1992 recording, "99.9F°" (A&M), a bold pairing of her vocals with electronic percussion, helped spawn the folktronica style that was especially big among English bands. And her 2007 disc, "Beauty and Crime" (Blue Note), is a collection of songs mostly about the city in the new millennium. Most recently, she has formed her own label, Amanuensis Records, and is rerecording her catalog and releasing her music according to lyrical themes. "Close-Up, Vol. 1, Love Songs," came out earlier this year, and three more editions are planned for the near future.

Ms. Vega has a casual warmth that makes speaking with her feel far less formal than an interview. And in our phone conversation Friday morning, she said that New York City remains a primary inspiration. "I'm always reflecting on the changes in the city that have happened since I came here in 1961." She said that she looks back particularly via the work of films like "Taxi Driver" and "Serpico" or the writings of Jonathan Lethem.

"I'm not one of those people who say New York was better when it was dirty," she continued. "I hate it when people say New York is now slick and money-driven. It's always been that way; when was New York City a tasteful, restful place?"

"People always ask me if 25 years feels like a long time," Ms. Vega said from the stage on Saturday as she began her show. "It doesn't. I can remember an event in every single year since that record came out." And with that, she and her bandmates launched into "Cracking," the first tune on her debut recording.

Most of the sold-out crowd at City Winery looked like it might still own Ms. Vega's debut in its original album form, and although some of the songs have been staples of Ms. Vega's concert repertoire for years, the band on Saturday remained faithful to the album's original renditions—thus the gentle guitar strums on "Freeze Tag" still evoked a spring breeze wafting through the trees of a brownstone block. Only on "Neighborhood Girls," Ms. Vega's attempt at a new wave song, was the cozy vibe disturbed with the addition of drummer Doug Yowell and backup vocals from her teenage daughter, Ruby Froom.

The second half of the show was devoted to works from other recordings. "Blood Makes Noise," a duet for bass and voice, was particularly effective. So was "Pornographer's Dream" with the full band. Age has done nothing to fatten Ms. Vega's figure, but it has given her voice a gentle rasp that crept into a few of the newer songs, such as "New York Is a Woman." Neither her songs nor her passion for New York City felt diminished by the passage of time.

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